AI The rain fell in a relentless, icy curtain, turning the neon reflections on the pavement into smeared watercolour nightmares. Detective Harlow Quinn’s breath tore from her lungs in ragged clouds, each footfall a sharp slap against wet concrete. Ahead, a dark shape – her suspect – wove through the sparse late-night crowd on Charing Cross Road like a phantom, a hood pulled tight against the downpour.
She’d been on him for three blocks, since he’d bolted from the mouth of an alley beside The Raven’s Nest. She’d seen the green neon sign glint off the puddles as he fled. He was fast, but Quinn had eighteen years and a lingering military precision in her stride. Her worn leather watch band was soaked, heavy on her wrist. She ignored it, focused on the gap between them, closing inch by agonising inch.
*Just a kid *, she thought, taking in the lanky frame, the too-big jacket. But kids in this part of Soho, near Silas’ bar, often carried things they shouldn’t. Information. Packages. Her gut, the one that had twitched the night DS Morris vanished into thin air outside a Camden warehouse, told her this one was connected . Connected to the whispers, the closed cases with odd residue, the clique that operated in the shadows. Morris’s face, pale and confused in the flash of her torch, flickered behind her eyes. She pushed it down. Now was for running.
The suspect ducked left, vaulting over a low wall into a service lane. Quinn followed, her sharp jaw set. Her shoes skidded on greasy cobbles. The lane was a canyon of dripping fire escapes and overflowing bins. The figure was scrambling ahead, heading north, always north. Towards Camden.
For twenty minutes, the chase was a blur of backstreets and neglected squares. The rain masked sound, reduced the world to the tunnel of her pursuit. Then the kid slipped through a rusted gate in a chain-link fence, into a derelict yard stacked with decaying pallets. Beyond it loomed the boarded-up arch of a disused Tube station entrance, its roundel sign long since pried away. A faint, sickly yellow light seeped from the cracks around a metal door set within the arch.
Quinn slowed, pressing herself against the wet brick wall of the yard. Her hand went to the service pistol holstered under her arm. The suspect was at the door, fumbling. He pulled something from his pocket – a small, pale object – and slotted it into a groove she couldn’t see. A soft *click * echoed in the damp air. The door swung inward, revealing a steep staircase descending into gloom . The kid glanced back once, his face a pale oval under the hood, then vanished inside.
The door began to swing shut.
Quinn’s mind raced . Protocol said call for backup, cordon the area. Protocol had been silent when Morris’s radio had cut out mid-sentence. Protocol didn’t have answers for the things she’d seen in evidence lockers – feathers that dissolved into smoke, coins with shifting faces. This was a lead, a tangible door into the world that had taken her partner.
She crossed the yard in six silent strides, her bearing rigid with purpose. She caught the heavy door just before it latched. The air that wafted up from below was warm, thick with the smell of damp stone, ozone, and something else – incense and rotting flowers. No sound of retreating footsteps . The staircase was dark, but a faint, pulsing glow came from deep below.
She drew her gun, holding it low and tight. No going back now. She stepped over the threshold and let the door sigh shut behind her, plunging her into near-darkness. The only light was the weird glow from below. She descended, the concrete steps slick with condensation. The stairs turned, and turned again, spiralling down far deeper than any normal station platform. The air grew warmer, the strange smell stronger.
A murmur reached her ears, then the distinct sound of commerce – low voices, the clink of glass, the shuffle of feet. It grew with each step. Finally, the staircase ended in a short, tiled corridor that opened out onto a platform.
Quinn stopped in the shadows of the corridor, her breath catching.
The abandoned Camden Town station platform had been transformed . It was a bazaar from a fever dream. Dozens of stalls, constructed from old packing crates, moth-eaten drapes, and repurposed Tube signage, lined the platform and the tracks beyond. Greenish witch-light glowed in glass jars, casting long, dancing shadows. The ceiling was lost in darkness, but pinpricks of bioluminescent fungus dotted the arches like sickly stars.
People – if they were all people – moved through the stalls. A woman with scales glistening at her temples haggled over a vial of swirling liquid. A tall figure shrouded in a trench coat had too many joints in its fingers as it counted out strange, triangular coins. The air hummed with low conversation in languages Quinn didn’t recognise.
The Veil Market. She’d heard the name, a whisper in the worst parts of her unsolved files. A supernatural black market. It moved every full moon. Required a bone token. The kid had used one.
And she had just walked right in. A cold dread, separate from the chill of her wet clothes, settled in her stomach . She was profoundly out of her depth. Her gun felt absurd, a crude tool in a place that dealt in subtler magics.
She scanned the crowd for the lanky suspect. He was gone , swallowed by the throng. To press forward into that crowd was to become a marked thing herself. A human. A cop. She could feel eyes already glancing her way, sensing the wrongness of her presence.
“You are either very brave or very stupid, detective.”
The voice was low, accented, and came from her left. She whirled, gun coming up halfway before she controlled the impulse.
A man leaned against the tiled wall just inside the corridor. He was handsome, with warm brown eyes and curly dark hair, olive skin pale under the strange light. He wore a simple dark sweater, and the chain of a Saint Christopher medallion glinted at his throat. His arms were crossed , the left forearm bearing a long, pale scar. He wasn’t threatening her. He looked… concerned.
“Who are you?” Quinn kept her voice flat, her eyes darting between him and the market.
“Tomás Herrera. I am a friend to some who come here.” His gaze flicked to her gun, then back to her face. “You do not have a token. How did you enter?”
“The door was open.” She didn’t lower the weapon. “You know I’m police.”
“I know the bearing. And the desperation.” He pushed off the wall, taking a careful step closer. He smelled of antiseptic and sage. “Your suspect is gone. Melted into the market. If you go out there, they will know you in a heartbeat. The guards will escort you out. Or worse. They do not like law here. Not your kind of law.”
Quinn’s mind raced . Herrera. The name was in a file. Former NHS, lost his license. Unofficial medic for the supernatural community. A fringe player. Could he be trusted? He hadn’t raised an alarm.
“I need to find him,” she said, her voice tight . “He has information.”
“About what? The things that go bump? The things that took your partner?” Herrera’s words were gentle, but they hit her like a physical blow. Her sharp intake of breath was answer enough. He nodded slowly . “I am sorry about Morris. A good man. Confused at the end.”
“You knew him?”
“I tried to help. It was… beyond my skills.” Herrera’s hand went to his medallion. “This place, detective, it is not for you. Not tonight. Not without an invitation. The information you seek… it is not carried by runners. It is kept by the stallholders in the deep tracks. And they do not talk to strangers. Especially not armed ones who smell of rain and Old Bailey.”
The decision hung in the damp air between them. She could step onto that platform, gun and warrant card and all, and demand answers. It would be a spectacular, short-lived failure. Morris had charged in. Morris was gone .
Or she could step back. Retreat up the stairs into the cold, rational rain. Let the kid go. Let the mystery fester for another night.
Herrera was offering her a third path. A glimpse. He hadn’t called the guards. He was talking to her.
Quinn’s finger eased off the trigger guard. She didn’t holster the gun, but she lowered it to her side. The weight of it was suddenly exhausting .
“What do you know?” she asked, the question leaving her like a surrender .
Herrera’s shoulders relaxed a fraction. “I know that chasing shadows through the market will get you killed. I know that sometimes, the answers come to those who wait, and listen, in the right places.” He glanced out at the eerie bazaar. “The Raven’s Nest. Silas hears things. He is… neutral ground. Come there tomorrow night. Dry. Without the weapon. Ask for me.”
It was a risk. It was bypassing every procedure. It was trusting a man who consorted with the very things she was supposed to investigate.
Quinn looked past him, at the swirling, impossible market. Her suspect was gone . The door to that world had opened, and she was standing on the threshold, soaked and alone. Going forward now was suicide. But going back empty-handed felt like a betrayal of Morris, of every unexplained case on her desk.
She gave a single, sharp nod. “Tomorrow.”
Herrera nodded back. “I will be there. Now, go. Before you are seen with me. The stairs are behind you. The door will open out.”
Quinn took one last, long look at the Veil Market – the glowing jars, the monstrous customers, the secret heart of the city beating beneath its streets. Then she turned her back on it, holstering her gun as she walked. She felt Herrera’s eyes on her until the corridor curved, and she was alone again, climbing towards the rain, the decision made, the real chase only just beginning.